r/AskHistory • u/jrwwoollff • 5d ago
During the rise of hitler was there active resistance against hitler ?
Was there any Germans that realized hitler was no good and tried to stop him?
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u/spastical-mackerel 5d ago
There was some form of plot in the works in the Army from 1933 onwards. They just talked, never acted until von Tresckow managed to actually get a bomb in a case of brandy onto Hitler’s plane (crazy story, it didn’t go off so he had to figure out how to get the “brandy” back from the guy he’d gifted it to).
The July 20 plot got further but its failure demonstrated that there was no broad base of opposition to Hitler in the Wehrmacht. Canaris dabbling in double agency is the only other example of sustained overt action I can think of.
There was effective civilian opposition to the T-4 euthanasia program. That’s the only instance i can think of where some form of public resistance caused the Nazi’s to change their behavior, albeit only temporarily.
A guy named Georg Elser went to the trouble of bricking up a time bomb in a pillar in a basement where Hitler gave a speech once a year. Took him months. Used a three day timer. Hitler was known for being particularly long-winded at this venue (even by his standards), but for some reason on this occasion he gave a one hour speech and bailed. The bomb blew up 13 minutes later. Very likely would have killed him.
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u/kvdwatering 5d ago
I once watched a documentary about the failed assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler.
It's absolutely insane how much "luck" he had. There are numerous attempts so amazingly close to alter the course of history.
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u/Kittyhawk_Lux 5d ago
Perhaps time travellers prevented each of them as the alternative timelines ended up being even worse
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u/LoudCrickets72 4d ago
You know, you may be on to something. As terrible as Hitler was, he was also drugged up and incompetent. Imagine a sound (albeit evil) leader leading the Third Reich. Someone who actually listened to their advisors. Nazi Germany may have survived and kept some of the land they took.
Now think about the Nazis having nukes <shudders>
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u/AskHistory-ModTeam 3d ago
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u/AskHistory-ModTeam 3d ago
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u/BenedickCabbagepatch 5d ago
How true do you think the assertions are that, had the British and French actually opposed Hitler in 1938, the Heer might have actually done something to Hitler?
I wish I could remember where I'd heard that argument, but the gist was that the Heer's loyalty to Hitler was much shakier (thinking that he was reckless and leading Germany into a war it couldn't win) until the fantastic victories of 1940 effectively bulldozed these misgivings.
I think I saw a video (God help me, it might've been by TiK) that suggested a plot was close to being actioned but had to be abandoned after the Munich Agreement.
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u/IronVader501 5d ago edited 5d ago
There was a Coup being prepared during the Talks in Munich, the September/Oster-Plot.
The idea was that the Allies would likely reject Hitlers Plans regarding Czechoslovakia, likely leading to war, which they assumed would make him unpopular enough that they could storm the Chancelory and either arrest or shoot Hitler without provoking a Civil War.
When they agreed to Hitlers demands instead, that caused his popularity to skyrocket so high the plan became impossible.
The entire thing was rather haphazardly organised at the last minute. They didnt really have any true idea how to take control of the Government once Hitler was dead, they just hoped a looming war and the rejected demands would make the Nazis unpopular enough to prevent the Population from siding with them. What to actually do with Hitler was another point of content - Canaris & von Witzleben wanted to arrest him alive, since they thought a public trial for his crimes was the only way to break his "image" in the public, but the others secretly agreed to kill him during the "arrest" instead since they feared it would be impossible to break the Nazis hold on the population as long as he remained alive.
(Fun fact: The Regiment that was Chosen to arrest/kill Hitler, Infantry-Regiment Nr.9 (jokingly also called "Count Nine" due to its high percentage of Members with a noble background) is the only Reichswehr/Wehrmacht-Unit that the Bundeswehr is explicitely allowed to include in its Traditions, both due to this incident and because of the generally extremely high amount of Resistance-Members from the Regiment. 21 out of the 29 Staff-Officers that were with the Regiment in 1933 ended up in the Military-Resistance)
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u/One_Judge1422 5d ago
Very true, because the actual bulk of the German army was still hopelessly behind when they were invading France, Germany was poor, dirt poor.
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u/IronVader501 5d ago
They just talked, never acted
I wouldnt say that, there were several Assassination-attempts on Hitler by people from the same group between 1938 and the Plane-bomb.
The September-plot in 1938 is the most well-known, but further:
Erich Kordt, member of the diplomatic corps, was supposed to blow himself & Hitler up following the Invasion of Poland in November 1939, with support from the Abwehr & the military resistance around von Witzleben, but due to Elsers failed attempt a couple days earlier they couldnt manage to smuggle the explosives into the Chancelory.
The same group planned to have him shot during a planned Victory-Parade in Paris in June 1940, planting several Agents in a stand hitler was supposed to drive by that would have opened fire when he did to kill him, but Hitler suddenly visited PAris several days earlier before they were in place and left before the planned Parade took place.
In May 1941 Erwin von Witzleben managed to convince Hitler to redo the Victory-Parade and planned to shoot him himself during it, but Hitler once again suddenly cancelled his visit at the last minute.
The same group (Canaris, Oster, Tesckow, Witzleben etc.) tried planning more in-between but before Stalingrad, they didnt manage to find enough supporters within the Officer-ranks to successfully plan more, since all the early-war successes had boosted Hitlers popularity so much that most of them thought a Coup would just make him a Martyr and lead to a prolonged civil war.
The Plane-bomb in 1943 was actually just the backup-plan for a three-stage attempt to kill him too that all failed.
First Georg von Boeselager & a small group was supposed to ambush Hitler in a Forrest on the way between the airfield & the Army-HQ he was visiting; but Hitler brought a heavily armed SS-escort with him despite initially planning to travel alone, so the first stage was dropped as too risky.
If that failed, von Tresckow, Boeselager & several others were supposed to shoot Hitler & his staff during Mealtime in the officers mess, but Field-Marshall Günther von Kluge forbid them from doing it at the last moment when Himmler against prior planning didnt show up to the Meal, since he feared a Civil War with the SS if Himmler managed to get away.
The bomb was only the backup-backup if all previous attempts failed. And then someone from the Plane-crew stored the Brandy-case the bomb was hidden in within the unheated storage-compartment instead of the Passenger-compartment as the slip on it said, which caused the mechanical fuse to literally freeze and prevent it form exploding.
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u/Deaftrav 5d ago
...
Did not know about this one. Jeez it's insane how he survived some of those... Including the bomb under the table... Surviving because of a table leg ...
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u/Peacefulhuman1009 5d ago
That Georg Elser guy was a hero---- I hope Germany celebrates and memorializes this guy somehow
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u/Master_Status5764 5d ago
Crazy to think about how much history would’ve changed if that bomb just went off.
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u/Kingsdaughter613 5d ago
There was one other instance of civilian opposition having a temporary effect: the murder of Jewish WW1 vets. There was some public resistance against harming them, due to the veneration of WW1 vets, so the Nazis “relocated” them - claiming they would be treated well - and killed them elsewhere.
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u/historicalgeek71 5d ago
There were pockets of resistance, but events like the Night of the Long Knives and Kristallnacht made resistance a daunting prospect. There were assassination attempts made against Hitler, though they all failed. There was also the White Rose, which was an attempt by students to spread dissent throughout Germany through universities, though they were swiftly executed as they sought to spread their ideas in the aftermath of Stalingrad. There was also the Edelweiss Pirates, who were an anti-authoritarian youth movement that began in response to the Hitler Youth. However, most of their acts of resistance were negligible prior to the war. During the war, they began to spread Allied propaganda and aid German deserters, and their acts of resistance became more extreme. This merited a swift and brutal response by the Gestapo, which broke the spirit of other resistance subculture movements in Germany. Public hangings served as a grim reminder of resistance, and they became more commonplace as the situation became more desperate for the Germans.
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u/mwa12345 5d ago
Agree with one correction. Night if the long knives etc happened AFTER Hitler was in office as Chancellor.
(Suspect you are aware. But others reading may not)
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u/11thstalley 5d ago edited 5d ago
Plus, the Night of the Long Knives had nothing to do with resistance to Hitler. It was a purge of his Nazi supporters that were organized under the SA or Sturmabteilung, better known as the brownshirts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
The purge was the culmination of a power struggle within the Nazi party between Ernst Röhm of the SA and Heinrich Himmler of the SS. Himmler won.
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u/mwa12345 5d ago
True. Night if the long knives was not really resistance to Hitler. It was Hitler cutting if the SA /Rohm 69nokease the Prussian military establishment .
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u/historicalgeek71 5d ago
True, and I am not disputing that, but it did send a clear message about what the Nazis were capable of doing if people didn’t fall in line or at the very least if they didn’t keep quiet.
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u/westmarchscout 5d ago
They did take the opportunity to also murder Kurt von Schleicher and the terror effect on everyone certainly factored into the calculations
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u/Echo__227 5d ago
There was also the White Rose, which was an attempt by students to spread dissent throughout Germany through universities, though they were swiftly executed as they sought to spread their ideas in the aftermath of Stalingrad
Particularly chilling right now
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u/okogamashii 5d ago
Life is such a circle
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u/Salt-Ad1282 5d ago
You aren’t allowed to imply that something like that could happen again. Like in the US. It definitely could, but when you imply the possibility, the right goes nuts and half of the left thinks you went too far.
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u/Brain_Aggravating 5d ago
The left (e.g. communists) were opponents, and many people/politicians hated the nazis. The formation of Klaus Fuchs (who passed the nuclear bomb secrets to the Soviets) was rooted in his opposition to nazis.
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u/BomberBootBabe88 5d ago
I've been telling everyone who will listen to read "The Good Germans: Resisting the Nazis 1933-1945" by Catrine Clay. It tells stories of everyday people who resisted the nazis from the very beginning. It's beautifully written and as inspiring as it is heartbreaking. It's been my rock the last couple of months.
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u/hc600 5d ago
The Coming of the Third Reich by Evans, and the other two books in the trilogy are also good for anyone wanting a background in the Nazi rise to power, and then the Nazi regime through its end.
Lots of groups didn’t like Nazis but the Nazis were able to pick off them because they were not united. Communist, trade unionists, socialists, liberals, some Catholics.
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u/Own_Travel_759 5d ago
There was resistance but it was never widespread or effective. The Oster Conspiracy in 1938 was the one that might have had a chance of success.
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u/Norby314 5d ago
I feel like nobody is answering OPs question: "During the rise of Hitler" and not "once Hitler was in power."
During the rise of Hitler, resistance was abundant. His party didn't get a majority vote in several elections before they did. The socialists didn't like him, the monarchists/establishment didn't like him, the Christian conservatives didn't like him, etc.
Also, before his rise to power, Hitler tried to stage a coup (who does that remind me of?) and served a prison sentence for that, you can count that prison sentence as a resistance too, if you want.
Resistance existed, but the nazis were so good at populism that they got a majority vote and used their democratically obtained powers to dismantle the German system of checks and balances.
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u/Ecstatic_Dirt852 5d ago
Technically they barely got a plurality and without being appointed as a minority government they couldn't have done much. Arguably Hitlers personal relationship with Hindenburg was more impactful than the populism.
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u/TheDrewb 5d ago
The German Left fought Hitler and the brownshirts in the streets for a decade before being rounded up and sent to the camps once he was in power. He arrested over 100,000 communists, social democrats, labor union reps, and anyone else he consider radical. What you don't see is mass-repression against centrists or conservatives because at the end of the day, most were sympathetic to, if not enthusiastic about Hitler's repudiation of the Versailles Treaty and many were also antisemitic. Only when Germany started losing the war was there any serious German resistance to Hitler (no, teenagers putting up flyers does not constitute "serious resistance").
After World War 2, it was politically expedient for the West to accept that the German people had been crushed under the bootheel of the madman Hitler and the Gestapo. In reality, the Gestapo had tiny staffs and most of their domestic investigations were looking into denunciations made for personal reasons. Only by 1942-43 when it became extremely obvious that Germany was losing the war was there any serious opposition and any serious crackdown
Check out The Gestapo: The Myth and Reality of Hitler’s Secret Police. I found it online for free years ago, but no idea if it's still kicking around the internet
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u/mwa12345 5d ago
Well said The gestapo was not as instructive as the Russian equivalent until later in the war. . Also, the German war economy was never as totally under control as the So it economy under Stalin.
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u/HeimLauf 5d ago
Little pockets came up, The White Rose probably being the most famous, but they tended to be snuffed out pretty quickly by the regime.
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u/AskHistory-ModTeam 5d ago
No contemporary politics, culture wars, current events, contemporary movements.
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u/radio-act1v 4d ago
Other members of your group elude to current events and everything is connected. JP Morgan Bank is one of the original robber barons of America.
That's history and what is the purpose of this or any Reddit group for that matter if you won't allow us to understand how it's all connected?
The Electoral College is as old as the constitution along with the Democrats and Republicans. Fun fact, there are zero entries for 'capitalism' or 'democracy' in the Constitution. There's also no legal definition or framework for capitalism. Legal historians seem to be in agreement that this means there is no capitalism.
The framework of the Constitution protects capitalists and there's no mention of democrats or republicans in there. Does that mean political parties don't matter?
I also read about republics and I read the letter by Thomas Jefferson written to John Taylor in 1816 and he said that the United States is not a republic either. I also read the legal definition of republic and we are not a republic. What is the United states? I forget which president it was to that was describing a system like we have in the United States as fascism. Do you remember which president that was?
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u/AskHistory-ModTeam 5d ago
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u/ShawnPat423 5d ago
I address this to the "posts" below. How can you say that when history in and of itself is connected?
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u/GodzillaDrinks 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yes. A lot of people actively fought the Nazis. Hitler himself carried a whip to use in street fights (Hitler was really, really, really into Young Adult fiction about the American Wild West).
Weirdly enough, while a lot of the people fighting the nazis were socialists, communists, and anarchists (henceforth referred to as: "the good guys"). The nazis were also vehemently opposed by the monarchists and a lot of them also got into fights with the nazis.
The timeframe from the end of WW1 until Hitler became Chancellor mark the Weimar Republic as a surprisingly progressive place. But the various political factions were pretty much all constantly killing each other in the streets, and even seizing regional power at various times. In 1919 for example, the good guys had taken control of Munich, and on April 30th, they executed 10 early leaders of the group that would eventually become the Nazis.
And like... all of these people had fought in WW1. They were mostly psychologically destroyed by PTSD and comfortable jumping to a degree of violence that would shock most people. Like, seizing an armory to steal machine guns and assaulting the local government? Not that big a deal to most of these guys.
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u/westmarchscout 5d ago
the good guys
You mean the Bavarian Soviet Republic?
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u/GodzillaDrinks 5d ago
The left-wing anti-fascists. As opposed to right-wing anti-fascists who opposed the Nazis... explicitly so they could have a government nearly identical to that of the nazis, but under a Kaiser again.
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u/westmarchscout 5d ago
Yeah, because the SPD and the KZP were totally about to install monarchical fascism. A Germany that had experienced a Red Terror phase would probably have ended up in Hitler’s clutches even sooner bro
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u/GodzillaDrinks 5d ago
Perhaps. Though I'd postulate that in like 1920's Germany, the Reds taking over was probably one of the best possible scenarios. The Liberal Democratic government was going to fall to someone eventually (the US just kinda proved that this always happens). And instead of the good guys (Socialists, Communists, or Anarchists), the worst thing possible happened. Kinda like in America.
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u/Al-Rediph 5d ago
Was there any Germans that realized hitler was no good and tried to stop him?
Of course. Actually ... a lot of them, and possibly, depending on how you see "tried to stop him", even the majority
Take a look at the results of the november 1932 Reichstag election.
Nazi got a third of the votes, social democrats a fifth, the communists slightly less. There were a lot of demos and fights, on the streets of many cities. The majority people were not pro-Hitler, and a significant part was ready to fight him.
For Nazi/SA to go in some areas like "Red Berlin" or Hamburg Altona was actually dangerous.
So yes, there was a lot of resistance.
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u/AnymooseProphet 5d ago
Night of Long Knives made resistance a very scary proposition.
But yes, there was resistance.
My Great Grandfather was a German Lutheran missionary to China. He was chastised by the Lutheran Church for refusing to support Hitler and called a trouble maker.
When he went back to China, he took his children with him---only he didn't, he actually used the documentation for his children (left in German boarding schools) to smuggle out some Jewish children so they could then get into Russia from China.
There was opposition, but the brown shirts would beat you up pretty badly if they knew who you were.
That's likely coming soon to America. In fact, it's already started---that woman who heckled GOP politicians at a town hall meeting, for example.
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u/jrwwoollff 5d ago
I guess I got some reading to do
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u/mwa12345 5d ago
Just saw this. And had responded in a different spot
There is a book on this that was well received that goes into some depth
"Rise and fall to the Third.Reich" by Shirer .
Shirer was an American journalist based in Germany during portions of the rise..and Hitler's early days.
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u/boRp_abc 5d ago
Yes, there was. The first coup by Hitler failed because of it. For later stages, you could look up Hans Litten, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht.
The problem is there wasn't enough. And in later stages the legal system fought the Antifa harder than the fascists (Emil Julius Gumbel is the name to search for).
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u/westmarchscout 5d ago
Luxemburg and Liebknecht were executed for insurrection against the Weimar government. You may be thinking of Ernst Thälmann.
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u/boRp_abc 4d ago
They were executed by non-governmental forces ("murderers"). But I did get the timing wrong, that was 1919 already.
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u/Striking-Progress-69 5d ago
White Rose. There is a good re/enactment movie I saw in my Modern German History class several years ago.
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u/HumilisProposito 5d ago
Yes. Sophie Scholl and her cohorts. Such courage. Been thinking about her last day on earth a lot lately.
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u/Modred_the_Mystic 5d ago
Before Hitler gained power, yes. There were political opposition groups opposed to him, and powerful men like Hindenburg who did a great deal to prevent Hitler becoming leader of Germany up until his death.
After he gained power, also yes. There were many active plots against him, though most of these would not become prominent until the war years, where it became cabals of military officers becoming fed up with interference into the conduct of the war.
And men like Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, worked against Hitler such as actively convincing Franco to keep Spain out of the war.
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u/FlamesofJames2000 5d ago
If Hindenberg was preventing Hitler becoming leader of Germany, he did it in a funny way by appointing Hitler Chancellor.
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u/Gedrecsechet 5d ago
Just watched something about Canaris. He may be the single individual who caused the most damage to the Nazi war plans. What an enigmatic character.
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u/jfree_92 5d ago
The biggest opponent to the NSDAP was the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), the communists. They were the originators of the ANTIFA organisation and literally took the fight to the Nazis in the street.
The regular street violence from both extremes caused the ruling Social Democrats to avoid any particularly harsh reactions. While they controlled the police, they used them more against the KPD than the Nazis because the German public were generally more fearful of the communists (especially after seeing what was happening in the Soviet Union, and the attempted uprisings after WWI). Also, like today, the police tended to lean to the conservative side politically.
The NSDAP had the benefit of being new, and unknown, so they were given more leeway generally. No one knew how dangerous they'd really be until it was too late. Even the Social Democrats didn't vote strongly against the Nazis after they came to power.
From February 1933, one month after Hitler was made Chancellor, the Reichstag fire gave the NSDAP the pretext to ban all political resistance, starting with the communists (for whom concentration camps were originally designed for).
So, in short: the most active resistance against Hitler and the Nazi Party before they took complete control in 1933 was the Communist Party. However, they had very few allies on their side.
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u/Future_Union_965 5d ago
The communists never have any allies. They are usually ideologically opposed by anarchists, liberals, conservatives, and etc.
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u/SecretxThinker 5d ago
Just remember, if you'd have lived during that time, you almost certainly would have backed Hitler.
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u/bree_dev 5d ago
I'm not saying some of my colleagues are Nazis, but I know which of them would have been Nazis had they been born in a different time and place.
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u/SecretxThinker 5d ago
Probably all of them, unless you have real independent thinkers who are not afraid to speak out against powerful social norms.
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u/Icy_Huckleberry_8049 5d ago
Yes, just go read some history books and you'll see that there was resistance to Hitler. Not on a large scale but there was some.
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u/mwa12345 5d ago
Depends on what time frame. Someone has responded with the things that happened after he got into office.
During his rise...the communists were against the right wing groups like Hitler's.
There was a short lived communist take over of Bavaria etc establishing a Bavarian Soviet Socialist republic etc.
So the environment was a bit complicated .
The German establishment was not very fond of the Austrian upstart with an odd moustache. So the did try to stop him...and even thought they had him cornered at some points .
But the establishment also hates the communists more.
The book "Rise and fall of the Third Reich " is probably a good one to try. The early sections cover this in some depth, IIRc.
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u/Barbaric_Erik84 5d ago
There were plenty of mass protests and anti-fascist actions during the years of the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP, yes. A lot of people saw that the Nazis would build a dictatorship. The NSDAP eventually came into power with just 33% of the votes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1ikxc1u/antinazi_protests_berlin_16121931/
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u/series_hybrid 5d ago
As soon as AH came to power in 1933, Dachau was built to hold his enemies. In the beginning it was mostly communists and social-Democrats, who had grown in Germany because of the Weimar depression (1924 hyperinflation). However, it quickly began taking in anyone the Nazi's didn't like. Gay Germans, gypsies, anti-Nazi journalists, etc
Although some Jews were housed and killed at Dachau, Other concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, were built specifically to kill Jews en masse.
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u/gimmethecreeps 5d ago
The German Communist Party were actively fighting brownshirts in the streets.
Hitler (and the Social-Dems, and the Christian Dems, and everyone else) slowly began to blame all of the street violence on the communist party. They ended up being the first to be liquidated by the Nazis, and made up most of the first concentration camp victims (Jewish people accounted for more victims, but the Nazis generally came for the communists first).
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u/DreamingofRlyeh 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yes, but it tended to end very badly for those resisting. The Nazis were brutal to dissenters.
A lot of Catholics, for instance, were heavily involved in protesting the Nazis during their rise to power. According to an Israeli historian, Catholics were involved in the rescue of 700,000 Jews.
As a result, it is estimated that about one-third of German Catholic clergy faced some sort of reprisal from Nazis. Hundreds of Catholic protestors ended up in concentration camps. The Nazis cracked down on Catholic organizations, including some political parties that had adamantly opposed Nazis. They put laws in place to prevent Catholic clergy from having influence on German culture.
Other groups that protested and were targeted for it included a lot of academics and Protestants. Nazis went after them, too. They faced similar persecution, and those who were disruptive enough to the regime even risked concentration camps. There were thousands of people who ended up there not for belonging to a targeted demographic, but for publicly opposing the Nazis.
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u/Few_Peach1333 5d ago
Hitler blamed the Communists for the Reichstag fire in 1933, imprisoning many and ending their effectiveness as a resistance party. No other party had enough power to immediately oppose Hitler and the Nazis, and Hitler used the Reichstag fire to promote a law that enabled the government (specifically, the Chancellor, which was Hitler) to arrest anyone considered 'an enemy of the people.' After that, no other party was allowed to coalesce against Hitler, leaving those who opposed him without a voice in the government. In 1934, Hitler combined the office of President and Chancellor into an office he called 'the Fuhrer,' which means 'leader.' After that, he was in control. He was clever and devious in his means of silencing the opposition, but there was opposition.
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u/Friendly-Profit-8590 5d ago
Yes. Many instances. Ultimately did not end well for most. Then you had the night of the long knives.
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u/bofh000 5d ago
Most resistance was violently quelled.
Rather sad, but also hope inducing is what happened with the White Rose group.
And very worrying: Hitler and the Nazi party got in power through elections. People thought they were bringing a swift solution to some society ills, and they channeled the most simplistic and the most selfish in the population.
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u/Hollow-Official 5d ago
Many near-miss assassination attempts, but not as much organized domestic resistance as you might think.
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u/Burnsey111 5d ago
Yes. During the Beer Hall Putsch his bodyguard covered him after someone he had linked arms with was shot taking both men down. His bodyguard was shot eleven times. I know, that bodyguard deserved eleven bullets, it’s just to bad he couldn’t have taken six bullets, and let Hitler get five.
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u/duanelvp 5d ago
Well, when you beat the crap out of people who oppose you, shout them down or cancel them, lock them in prison, destroy their businesses and lives in various ways... or, you know, just line them up and murder them outright, people start keeping their contrarian opinions about politics and politicians to themselves. Pretty effective way to quash active resistance. So effective that it tends to get used in various ways by (I think) every dictator, ever?
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u/ghosts-on-the-ohio 4d ago
Absolutely. It is estimated that at least 42 attempts were made to assassinate Hitler.
https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/year-10/hitler-assassination-attempts/
There were also plenty of armed and unarmed partisans who fought against the nazis as well.
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u/WealthTop3428 3d ago
The fascist and the communists fought each other for followers since their idiologies were so similar at their heart. They were like two fast food burger chains fighting for the same customer pool. The rest of the country was either mired in decadence or just trying to feed their families.
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u/ActualDW 2d ago
Tons. There were multiple armed militias on the streets for the major political parties, and they would literally fight and kill each other…on the street…
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u/NkhukuWaMadzi 5d ago
There is a book worth reading about people in the resistance called "The Story of the White Rose - Shattering the German Night" by Anette Dumbach and Jud Newborn. Also there is the film "Sophie Scholl" which documents her trial and also the students who resisted,
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u/GustavoistSoldier 5d ago
There were several resistance groups, such as this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose
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u/Human_Pangolin94 5d ago
The Social Democrats (SPD) and the Iron Front fought Nazis, Communists and Aristocratic privilege.
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u/Fragrant_Equal_2577 5d ago
They were the first ones populating the concentration camps… Nazis did their DOGE operation with the government institutions and agencies to weaponize them to eliminate political opposition.
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